HARRISBURG -- A new report has found manpower and equipment problems, plus a disturbing lack of communication among state agencies, to be major causes of the botched response to the Valentine's Day ice storm, when hundreds of cold, hungry motorists were stranded in traffic jams for up to 24 hours on major interstates in Eastern Pennsylvania.

The Department of Transportation, the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency and the Pennsylvania State Police didn't talk to each other, or to Gov. Ed Rendell and a top aide, Joseph Martz, for hours after the storm began on Feb. 13. That was the finding of James Lee Witt, former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who was hired by Mr. Rendell for $130,000 for a report on what went wrong.

"There were some bad decisions made and breakdowns in policy," Mr. Rendell told a news conference at the Capitol. "There were some breakdowns in communication at PennDOT and a lack of supervision.''

He said some lower level officials might be reassigned, but he saw no reason to fire anyone, including PEMA Director James Joseph or PennDOT Secretary Allen Biehler. Both have been sharply criticized by state legislators and local officials from Berks County, where the worst of the Feb. 14 traffic backups were.

"Al Biehler has been as effective a PennDOT secretary as we've had in decades," said the governor, who picked him for the PennDOT post in 2003. "He's been an extraordinary transportation secretary and has done a good job marshalling resources and identifying areas that need repairs. His body of work is excellent."

The storm began Feb. 13 and continued to pelt roads in Berks, Schuylkill and other eastern counties with snow and freezing rain for all of Feb. 14 and into Feb. 15. The state's slow response left hundreds of motorists stranded for as long as 24 hours.

Mr. Witt, who will continue to oversee the state's response to his report, found these major flaws:

The PennDOT district that covers Berks County, which was the hardest hit area, didn't have enough snowplow drivers to keep all the plows going for more than a single 12-hour shift. That wasn't nearly long enough to plow I-78, which quickly became covered in ice Feb. 14, causing many trucks and cars to crash.

The district had enough snowplows -- 42 -- said Mr. Martz, but there were only 62 PennDOT drivers. PennDOT failed to either hire additional part-time drivers who would work from December to March, or to arrange for privately owned snow trucks to bolster the PennDOT crews, investigators said.

Three senior managers from the PennDOT Berks County district retired in late January, and no experienced managers were named to replace them. "There was a very inexperienced crew managing this storm," Mr. Martz said.

PEMA didn't call for a "level 3" storm response until about 8 p.m. Feb. 14, which was 14 hours after Mr. Martz had ordered all state offices closed that day due to the ongoing storm. As a result, top officials from PennDOT, state police, PEMA, National Guard, and environmental protection were hours late in assembling at a command center in Harrisburg.

As a result of that, Mr. Rendell didn't learn of the long traffic tie-ups until nearly 8 p.m. on Feb. 14, which delayed the call-out of the National Guard. He praised the Guard members for helping stranded motorists when they reached I-78 and I-81 on the night of Feb. 14.

55 of 74 "road sensors" embedded in the pavement of I-78 weren't working and some hadn't worked since the summer of 2006, Mr. Martz said. The sensors tell PennDOT what the road surface temperature is -- and thus what kind of chemical to put down to melt ice or snow. They also tell officials if cars are stopped on the pavement.

Many of the electronic roadside signs along the highways weren't working, so they couldn't warn approaching motorists of the traffic jams ahead.

State police were late in learning about the stalled traffic, and thus delayed for hours the closure of on ramps, allowing more and more cars to add to the jams.

State police Commissioner Jeffrey Miller learned about the I-78 backup not through official channels but by chance, when another state official who was caught in the jam phoned him.

Mr. Rendell said officials will consider whether to put removable sections in some of the concrete barriers that keep eastbound and westbound traffic from colliding head-on. Some of the stalled eastbound traffic could have been switched over to the less-clogged westbound lanes if a few concrete barriers had been removed.

Mr. Rendell said he will consider a proposal by two Republican legislators, Sen. Jeffrey Piccola and Rep. Ronald Marsico, both of Dauphin, to create a new position, state director of public safety, to coordinate all the emergency response agencies, including PennDOT, PEMA, state police, National Guard and the Department of Environmental Protection.

He said that when he was mayor of Philadelphia in the 1990s, he had a "managing director" who was a single point of contact for all city agencies during a time of crisis. He said the state has no such person, who would be empowered to act for the governor, including calling out the National Guard, in time of emergency, and maybe there should be such a person.

The Republican-controlled state Senate, saying the Witt report had placed most of the blame on the Rendell administration, approved a bill yesterday giving the Senate the power to confirm any new PEMA director.

"This was Pennsylvania's Valentine's Day massacre," said Sen. Roger Madigan, R-Bradford. "This report is an indictment of this administration's failures."

Sen. John Wozniak, D-Johnstown, denounced the move as "playing politics." The bill now goes to the House.